Mamata Banerjee: News

Born in 1955, Mamata Banerjee is an Indian politician and the first female Chief Minister of Bengal. She is a cofounder and the chief of the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). She started her political career by taking part in student political groups of the Congress party and held crucial positions in their committees. As a member of the Congress, she contested her first Lok Sabha election in 1984 from Jadavpur. However, she quit the Congress party due to her differing beliefs and formed the AITC in 1997. The AITC briefly joined the NDA alliance, and Banerjee served as the Union Railway Minister between 1999-2001, only to leave and then briefly re-join the alliance in 2003 and become the Coal and Mines Minister in 2004. ‘Didi’, as she is fondly called by her supporters, was a vehement critic of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and campaigned against its land allotment policy, eventually leading to the Tata Motors exit in 2008. Her persistent campaigning led her to gain prominence and support, and she became the Chief Minister of West Bengal in 2011 for the first time. She was re-elected in 2016 as well as 2021 as the Chief Minister of the state.